


Puerto Rico

by allthebeautifulthings9828



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Declarations Of Love, Fallen Castiel, First Kiss, Human Castiel, Hunting Aftermath, Hurt Castiel, Implied Castiel/Dean Winchester, M/M, POV Dean Winchester, Puerto Rico, beach
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-18
Updated: 2013-07-18
Packaged: 2017-12-20 14:54:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,565
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/888577
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/allthebeautifulthings9828/pseuds/allthebeautifulthings9828
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Newly human, Castiel has his first close call in a hunt in Puerto Rico. He sits alone on a beach for hours with Dean watching over him from the distance. Sam pushes his brother to go comfort the fallen angel, but neither of them knows the real reason Castiel seems to haunted by his close call.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Puerto Rico

It was a close call. Too close, really.

Dean watched Castiel from their hotel balcony as he sat in the sand near the ocean surf, a new human facing his first taste of mortality. He'd been shot at and thrown off a low-rise cliff before they finally ganked the ghost. Shaken, he said nothing for hours. He only limped out to the beach on his most likely fractured leg.

Night looked entirely different in Puerto Rico. It seemed darker. Dean saw the ocean surf illuminated by lights from the hotel, but further out, the black ocean blended into the black sky. Garth had sent them on the ridiculous case and Dean hissed and cussed the entire flight down there. He plotted Garth's death the whole time, really, but part of him was proud the little geek had an exotic Puerto Rican ex-girlfriend who needed help. The damn ghost refused to die quietly. It was probably too dangerous of a case for Castiel being freshly forced out of Heaven but they couldn't very well leave him alone in Kansas so far from family.

A beer bottle appeared. Dean took it from Sam and swallowed a long measure of it.

"He gonna be okay?" Sam asked, gesturing toward the lonely silhouette with his beer.

"I dunno, man," replied Dean quietly.

"First close calls are always the scariest."

Dean nodded but something tugged at his stomach. Something protective. Something he felt with the Leviathans, when he was broken, and in Purgatory. Now that Castiel was human, that something felt all the more urgent, pressing on his chest. He knew what it was but he tirelessly worked to bury it. That complication in his life didn't have to be real if he didn't say it out loud. But he didn't have to say it out loud if he really stopped to think about it. Standing there in the hotel room doorway silently watching Castiel said for him. He swallowed half the beer in one long pull down his throat and leaned against the door frame.

"Kinda weird seeing him in shorts and a t-shirt," Sam commented as if trying to fill the silence. "He almost passes for human."

"He  _is_ human," Dean corrected, a shortened touch of temper edging each word.

It was weird seeing Castiel in cargo shorts, a faded blue shirt, and flip flops. Sam was right. He just didn't want to acknowledge that he missed that stupid trench coat and backwards tie. Castiel was an invincible warrior when he fell in lo-- _when the unspeakable happened_. Seeing the new fragility, the fear, the uncertain future in his bright blue eyes took time for Dean to understand.

He suddenly felt Sam staring at him.

"What?"

The younger Winchester shrugged the way he did when he didn't want to say something he knew. "You could go talk to him, y'know, if you're gonna stand here babysitting all night."

He made a throaty noncommittal sound.

"Dean, c'mon." A huff of obvious frustration pushed through Sam.

He backed up a step, feeling the accusation ready to pop out into the open, and moved as if subtly dodging a ball.

"Just go out there. He needs you and you know it. Stop dancing around it," Sam said with a bitch-face that formed in under a second.

And the sad part was Dean felt just drunk enough to do it. He drained the beer bottle with a third long drink and tried to remember how many of the dead beer bottles scattered in the room belonged to him. The bottle count steadily climbed the longer he had to sleep in the room next to Castiel's room in the bunker, the longer he watched him shuffle out in the mornings with sleepy bedhead as adorable as any woman he'd been with before, but he pushed it away.

A shove to the upper arm and Sam faced him, saying in a low tone, "Look, man, it's okay. I _know_. Nobody's gonna care. Now that he's one of us, y'know, human, what's stopping you?"

"No idea what you're talking about, Sammy."

It looked almost comical the way Sam managed to roll his eyes with his whole body at times. "Whatever. Be a dick then. But you're not doing him any favors by avoiding this thing. Look at him out there." His stretch of an arm extended outside, gesturing at Castiel, who hadn't moved in over an hour. "You're really gonna let him stew in fear because you're too hung up on looking gay? He thinks he could have died. What if he did die? It could happen, y'know. There's not enough beer in the world to kill the pain when the person you love dies and can't ever come back." His eyes clouded with old things. "Don't be a dick like that. This is the one thing you can control in your life and you're acting like it's another curse on the family. Get over yourself, man."

Sam left Dean there in the doorway, padding into the adjoining room and slamming the door. Behind his back, the allegedly older, more mature Winchester made a mocking yappy face after he was gone, but the nagging inside worsened. He turned back to the shadowy silhouette on the beach. It didn't look like Castiel intended to come inside that night in spite of distant lightning bubbling in the sky over the ocean. Dean knew he wouldn't think of rain and wind bringing on illness.

"Son of a bitch," he muttered under his breath.

He kicked off his shoes and ventured outside, first over the hotel pavement, then turning into warm, fine sand beneath his naked feet. The former angel's profile disappeared into shadow but Dean saw his legs folded upward and his arms folded over his knees. It made him look distinctly human, especially combined with those new baggy cargo shorts and thin, faded t-shirt. It had been one of Dean's hand-me-downs and he favored it over the slow accumulation of newer clothes. Dean pretended to be oblivious to Castiel favoring his cast offs. If it didn't mean affection, he didn't think he could stomach that kind of rejection. Castiel was  _the one_ people always waxed poetic about but Dean never dipped a toe into such uncertain waters.

"You gonna sit out here all night?" Dean stood near him with hands on his hips, refusing to sit down in a show of intimacy.

"Go to bed, Dean."

He scoffed. "I'd love to, except it's your turn on the pull-out and I can't lock up if you're out here. So come in and I'll leave you alone."

Castiel let out an irritated sigh. He slammed a hand into the sand, clearly pissed but unable to express it properly, not that Dean knew anything about healthy expressions of emotion. The former angel planted a foot and a hand in the sand in a hulking effort to stand, but weight on his injured leg weakened his balance. He collapsed without ever getting up, a miserable grunt of pain passing into the night. A fist pounded the beach for a second time.

" _Fuck_!" he growled.

The blasphemous swearing amused Dean and he chortled but covered it with a fake cough. "Don't think I've ever heard you swear."

"Shut up," Castiel muttered. "I don't understand how you humans deal with all this  _weakness_. It's misery."

"Well, yeah," said Dean, shrugging, "being human can be miserable. But it can be pretty great sometimes too. Hold still." The hunter crouched in the sand and molded hands around the offending ankle. "Where's it hurt?"

No response came. Dean glanced at the shadow of Castiel's face and found him staring intensely, silently, and unreadable.

"C'mon, Cas, it was a close call but you're not fatally hurt. Don't pout."

Darkness and shallow ocean water smashed into Dean's back, knocking the wind out of him. The first thing that registered in his mind was that Castiel had punched him, but no, no, that wasn't right. He blinked, waves rolling gently through him and beneath him. Then suddenly a mouth covered his. Five o'clock shadow scratched his chin. Lips and teeth smashed into his, pulling and sucking with the sort of aggression that bordered on anger.

His body recognized the sensation before his brain did. Eagerness of a teenager just tasting a girl -  _shit_ , a  _boy_ \- for the first time hardened him in his jeans instantly. As his brain caught up with his body, he realized Castiel's body weight spread over him and Castiel's mouth invaded his, releasing pent up frustration.

Dean grabbed his face and pushed him back, their lips popping apart, swollen and wet. "Cas?" he whispered. The sound was barely audible over the surf.

"I'm angry and  _pouting_ , as you say, Dean, because if I had been killed, I would never have been able to do that. Regret is one of the worst emotions. I couldn't take it anymore."

Thumbs lightly caressed back and forth over Castiel's cheekbones. "What about you ankle?" he whispered.

"I'll survive," said Castiel.

"Did you have to knock me off my ass?"

Castiel smirked. "Yes, Dean. You knocked me off mine."

Laughing, the hunter tugged the former angel down and kissed him again. Strong fingers latched around the back of his head, holding him close as the ocean surf rolled in around them.

"Let's go to bed," he murmured against Castiel's lips.


End file.
